The Jukes on Me

The following was posted on my myspace sometime last Fall. Enjoy.

Tonight, I went out with Kristin to Chasers, this bar in Keansburg that's the proud home to countless cover bands, a pool table, and this arcade punching machine where guys line up to pay a buck to see who hits hardest. Tonight, the last I saw, this tiny Mexican guy was beating every bald headed, wifebeater wearing fellow in the joint with a maximum power score of 848. Badass.

Anyway, searching for something to do, I had a brief love affair with the jukebox. Apparently, this one connected to the internet to retrieve songs. This meant a whole assemblage of great possibilities. This was a relief to me after visiting the Ted's Tavern jukebox a few weeks back, in which the only good stuff to listen to was The Rolling Stones "Let It Bleed" album, and even that only let you choose 2 out of it's 9 songs. Goddamn singles.

Being that I was already tipsy, I wasted a buck to play Guided By Voices "Game of Pricks." In between a barrage of Marilyn Mason, Metallica, and Kid Rock (I shit you not, the guy before me was cuing up that "I'm a Cowboy Baby" song from 1998 with the enthusiasm of a race horse on uppers), I could not wait to hear Bob Pollard and the boys from Dayton, OH crash the testosterone party for 2 and a half minutes.

Then, I found Sonic Youth's "Death Valley 69" and gave the machine another hard earned buck. Wow, I thought, now that's 5-6 minutes of complete fucking mayhem the way it was meant to be. No James Hetfield to kick ol' Eric around anymore.

I waited. And waited. And ordered another beer. And waited. Then finally, after Creed came the opening chords to "Game of Pricks." It had arrived. The night was conquered. I could finally drink a beer in a place of popularity, full of guys looking to fuck young girls, and feel completely at peace.

The first verse kicked in. Then the chorus. I smiled. Sipped. Thought about how I had to take a piss. Listened. Laughed. Sang a line or two to my bottle. And then... "Alright Chasers. We bring you the badest motherfuckas this side of the Atlantic. STUCK IN A DECADE." Yes, good old Stuck in a Decade. Another band with so little ambition to do anything original that they literally named themselves after being stuck somewhere in time.

After all that, I only got to hear half of the one of the top 10 best songs ever written, only to then dive head first into a shitty '80's cover band that began to play the Go-Go's "Vacation." No "Death Valley '69" for me. 2 bucks down the drain for two songs I could have listened to when I got home. I just thought it might be nice to feel content outside the same four walls of ours for 6 minutes with music that didn't speak to 10 million people at once. Unfortunately, that's not the way the world works.